“It's all user-generated content so it generates a steady stream of screenshots/videos/etc, posted across social media, it's free so it still attracts constant waves of fresh visitors, and lately, it's a reference point (or cautionary tale) for the new wave of VR platforms,” Au told me in an email.

...Second Life is still a thing because despite its age and the easy jokes, it owns an entire market it invented itself... Indeed, the most surprising thing about Second Life is not that it’s still a thing, but that 13 years after its inception, it is still way ahead of its time.

My only quibble is the article saying the graphics look "incredibly dated", because SL's graphics now look quite good and up to date... if you have a high-end desktop PC and/or a powerful third party SL viewer which take advantage of those graphics updates. But like I said, that's a quibble, because relatively few people have high-end desktop PCs, let alone know how to install a third party viewer.

Interestingly, this reappraisal of Second Life from Vice, one of the top media sites in the US, happens just as Le Monde, the top news outlet in France, is also reappraising SL:

"It was interesting to hear how protective these men were of their lovers' characters," she tells me. "To me, that indicates either a fetishization of the knight-in-shining-armor approach to dating women or... just that people get very, very attached to their subjective depictions of women they've been intimate with."

For instance, she writes about the guy who created a Skyrim character mod based on his girlfriend (above), uploaded with the utterly charming file name, “Enjoy My Girlfriend.” Or even worse, the anonymous female Second Life user who suffered a similar fate:

One female Second Life resident, let’s call her “Avi,” suffered the side-effects of Lara Croft syndrome when her ex, a popular content-creator in Second Life, modeled an avatar body closely off hers.

“It was my shape he used for the base shape for the stuff he made,” Avi told me. When she dumped him, Avi said he used her shape on in-world posters advertising her digital avatar body, which was for sale to other Second Life residents, without her permission. Worse, she added, over the course of a few months her ex began to alter her shape—inflating her ass, shrinking her waist, stretching her legs.

“He was full of rage that I was done with him,” Avi told me. “He took me and then ‘idealized’ me in his own image. Creepy.”

Wonder who the creepy content creator in question is. However, it's not all negative, not at all -- in fact, I just pointed out to Cecilia that most of SL users she profiled roleplayed as their significant others for positive reasons and with their SO's permission or approval. Like this one, which is actually oddly romantic:

Click here to get it, both for Mac and PC, and optimized to work with Oculus and Vive, and Leap motion controllers. (Unlike Project Sansar, which is PC-only, at least to start.) While we still don't know much about Linden Lab's Project Sansar, we do know few people involved in Second Life's early creation are involved with it. High Fidelity, by contrast, has been SL co-creator Philip Rosedale's baby for the last three years after leaving Linden Lab. (Click here to read about its evolution during that time.)

As Donald Trump continues to ride roughshod over much of the United States, there’s multiple reports that Trumps’ virtual fans are riding roughshod on Bernie Sanders’ unofficial headquarters in Second Life as well. Sanders' spot is in the sim of Caspoli, located here, with a Bernie 2016 banner that can be seen from satellite -- a Roman-themed hangout space in a peaceful meadow, where Bernie supporters often gather to share news of their favorite candidate. But lately, the place has been besieged by pro-Trump griefers. I first read a report of anti-Bernie griefing from roving furry reporter Bixyl Shuftan (yes, that's a thing) and found out it wasn't an isolated incident:

“There is a picture I managed to capture of one of the flags spewing from a particle dispenser at HQ,” Sanders support group member Macaria Wind tells me, handing over an image file of a Trump swastika. “Left there by one of Trump's supporters when no one was around.”

But that was only the start. During a Bernie rally in SL, Mr. Wind goes on, Trump-supporting demons flew around Bernie’s rally, endlessly typing ”TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!" into text chat.

“Pages and pages of TRUMP! LOL,” Wind tells me. “[O]ne has to laugh at the childishness displayed by some of his supporters. In my opinion, they mimic their candidate. I must add though, what is not a laughing matter are the racial slurs and bigotry witnessed by one group member who visited Trump HQ when there were actually people there.” (Read more about that incident here.)

To be sure, virtual landowners in Second Life can bar anyone from their property. But that effort was, well, trumped, by a Trump supporter’s next move:

Vive is a fantastic piece of hardware that already can be used for some actual useful training and fun in that regard. BUT, the angles of the gun grips are mostly all off, and that screws up muscle memory for those of us who have been doing this for a long time. I enjoy [VR gun-oriented games] ... but I am afraid playing them too much right now will make me worse at competitions where speed and accuracy are absolutely critical.

He even goes so far as to create that image above for reference, citing another VR/RL gun fan:

Monday, April 25, 2016

Beev Fallen doesn't just take fantastic SL photos (as I wrote about here), he's also creating fantastic demos of realistic lighting in SL like the above, achieved through projectors:

Scene uses five projectors to emulate light & color reflections, and a few regular lights for ambient lighting. Thanks Skills for sharing this awesome trick with SL projectors. [Yes, the Skills who's been booted out of Second Life. -- WJA] Built for "Ambient Dark" WindLight preset (100% darkness), which is the best way to achieve precise results with lights, projectors and materials.